Packing a plane ready to fly out on time, as scheduled in the manifest, is one of the many tasks carried out by the Royal Flying Doctor Service nurses at Port Augusta.
The RFDS provides a vital service to people living in rural, regional and remote Australia.
Every year, it assists more than 56,000 patients in SA and NT, approximately one patient every 10 minutes.
The Port Augusta branch has a monthly schedule, which secures teams for clinics on top of their emergency retrievals and patient transfers.
Primary Health Care registered nurse Tessa Bennett starts work at about seven in the morning on days she is in the air and finishes whenever they arrive back to base, but said she typically worked from eight until four, Monday to Thursday.
"I have about an hour and a half on flight days to make sure we are packed, ready to go and that we have everyone we need on-board," she said.
"A finish time isn't always guaranteed - some days we are back at six, other days we have got back well into the evening.
"It depends on what happens on the day."
She said her dream was to work for the RFDS after being exposed to the service as a child growing up with stations in her family.
"I'm now, as a 28 year-old, working for the same clinic that I helped my family set up for on the days they flew in to run a clinic," she said.
"I am a registered nurse and I have a post-grad certificate in clinical nursing and chronic disease management.
"But we do a lot of simulations on base, as not every day is an emergency, so we're always keeping up our skills through simulations that are facilitated by the doctors, the flight nurses, and our critical care doctors."
Ms Bennett said station workers often would pop into their Port Augusta base to have face-to-face consults and get immunisations.
"Otherwise we will see them on a bush ran the first week of the month," she said.
"We land at all the homesteads and catch up with the families and facilitate a clinic whether that be in their lounge room or their verandah or in their ute by the side of the plane - wherever we can really.
"A lot of our cohort seems to be station people, so every week we're dealing with families or individuals that are from stations."
"We can do medicine under a tree, I've even done it on a barbecue with plywood on it."
- RFDS rural generalist doctor Sally Cole
She said the best bit of working as a nurse for the RFDS was caring for people in sickness and in health in the communities they want to be in.
"We try to facilitate whatever we can out there, rather than asking them to hop in a car and drive to Adelaide," she said.
"We really do go the extra mile to keep them where they want to be."
The worst bit though is the flies, according to Ms Bennett.
"They really do test your patience," she said.
"And then the heat - you push on but sometimes it really does get to you.
"The positives of the job far outweigh the negatives."
Leading up to her bush clinic days, she makes phone calls to the destination town or station to schedule appointments and inform those nearby that the RFDS will be there.
On days the staff are not in the air with clinics or retrievals, they are simulating medical episodes to keep up-to-date with the most relevant and current training.
"We need to know how to act in the case of an emergency and have that knowledge as part of our muscle memory," she said.
RFDS rural generalist doctor Sally Cole works one week a month with the RFDS and also works in a clinic in Adelaide.
"I come up to Port Augusta to work as a RDFS doctor but the week is different everyday," she said.
"Today, I was on a clinic round at Blinman, so the start time was eight and home time is when we fly back into base and put away all the things and home time - could be six o'clock at night, or seven, it depends on what pans out during the day," she said.
"And then duty doctor days are when we're on the base and we are first on call for retrievals and for acutely unwell people - that starts at eight and finishes at six or you are on nights, which is six in the evening to eight in the morning, variations of that - so it depends on what what you're doing on the roster."
Dr Cole said when she was in primary school, she wrote down that her goal was to be a doctor and in 2000 she was involved in the remote and rural women's health program where her love for the outback grew.
"We were going out into very remote little communities in little light aircraft, bringing female doctors into the Outback," she said.
"My first bush clinic was in Marla in 2003 and I did a little patch run once a month for about three days.
"I started this job about four and a half years ago - just as COVID hit - it was an interesting time to start in an aero-medical position.
"But I just love it."
She said her role was very rewarding.
"I have a passion for being involved in delivering quality health care to people in very remote, difficult, vulnerable locations," she said.
"Coming back from a clinic one time, I've been dropped in on a retrieval at Glendambo where a man had fallen over and struck a concrete floor and was unconscious.
"So the clinic flight dropped me in with the trauma packs and I started the resuscitation whilst we waited for the retrieval plane to come out from Port Augusta.
"Those things can happen after a clinic and it's all been sorted out and planned with communications and the pilot and care team and we talk all the time because plans can change at a moment's notice."
Dr Cole said the RFDS job was unique because of how many moving parts there were.
"There's the medical side, but there's also the aviation side, there's the engineering side - is the plane safe?" she said.
"Then there's the communication side, which is the hub of it all, where they're working out where planes are going and flight times and the flight and duty times and avgas allowances and there's just so much to consider.
"It's not just a purely medical decision - it's a multidisciplinary team decision that's made very quickly and I really enjoy the team building because that side of things you don't necessarily have in town."
She said the RFDS was portable - they pop-up and they could practice anywhere.
"If you think about it in the retrieval side of things, motorcyclists come off in creek beds," she said.
"We can do medicine under a tree, I've even done it on a barbecue with plywood on it."
Kiara Stacey
Journalist for Stock Journal. Kiara was in classified sales at Stock Journal before joining the editorial team in 2021. Kiara completed a Bachelor of Communication (journalism) at Deakin University the year prior.
Journalist for Stock Journal. Kiara was in classified sales at Stock Journal before joining the editorial team in 2021. Kiara completed a Bachelor of Communication (journalism) at Deakin University the year prior.
